Uber SDE 1 Interview Experience & Prep Strategy
On-campus opportunity
I am a student of the Electronics department at NIT Trichy. Here’s how I cracked one of the most challenging companies, Uber.
The journey was never a straight path. I had to make many risk-taking decisions on the way. I hope you can learn something from my experience.
Before sitting for placements, I interned at Samsung Research Institute Bangalore, and according to the college rule, we can’t sit for placements if we have a pre-placement offer.
Uber came as one of the first company to our campus for hiring. Everyone was super excited about applying since it had no CGPA as a cutoff. I was only a 7 pointer and this is proof that if you do well in your interviews, your CGPA doesn’t matter.
The Interview Experience
(Note: I wouldn’t disclose exact questions because of NDA)
The entire process consisted of 1 online test followed by 3 rounds of interviews.
Online Test
We had to solve 3 questions in 45 minutes of time. The questions were something like this;
1. Convert a long string of numbers from one type of base to another base. It was marked as easy difficulty in the portal, and this question gave 100 points.
Link to a similar problem:
www.geeksforgeeks.org
2. It was based on the concept of a double knapsack, where we had an extra dimension of time added to the problem. It was marked as hard difficulty in the portal and gave 300 points.
Link to a similar concept:
www.geeksforgeeks.org
3. This one was based on the concept of DP, where we had to count the number of unique subsequences with GCD = 1. It was marked as hard difficulty in the portal and gave 300 points.
Link to Similar problem:
www.geeksforgeeks.org
Candidates who scored 700/700 were shortlisted for the interviews, and from my batch, only three people were called for the interviews.
Interview Round 1
Round 1 started at 9 am; it was a 45 min round. Starting 5 mins went into the introduction, and then the interview gave a question on the Codesignal platform.
The question was similar to the Rainwater trapping problem. I had to develop the approach and code it in a given time. The code performed well on all the test cases.
Problem Link:
leetcode.com
Interview Round 2
Round 2 started at 10 AM; I got only 15 mins in between to recollect my thoughts. This round also had the same format as round 1.
We discussed the left view, top view, and bottom view of a tree. We discussed approaches to solve all the problems, and I was finally asked to code out a tree’s bottom view and top view.
I lagged a lot of time in this round because I took the time to explain the approaches. So I had only 7–8 mins to code out both the problems. I got nervous due to time lag, but the interviewer helped me a lot in calming my nerves.
Links to similar problems:
www.geeksforgeeks.org
www.interviewbit.com
leetcode.com
Interview Round 3
I got the call for round 3 at 11:30 AM. This round was a techno-hr-based round where we started with introductions, and I asked about the work culture at Uber.
We discussed my previous internship experiences and projects; we dived deep into understanding the implementational aspects of my projects as well.
Then I was asked a system design question, where I had to design a system similar to Booking.com or Airbnb.
www.gohired.in
A lot of behavioral questions were asked towards the end.
www.themartec.com
The round went for about 90 mins, and we had a lot of light-hearted chat towards the end.
Results
After roughly 4 hours of restlessness, I started getting tons of notifications all of a sudden, and when I saw the messages. Everyone congratulated me for the only selection at Uber in my entire batch!
Roadmap to prepare
- I used Leetcode to get a solid grip over my DSA concepts, gave tons of virtual contests to get a good speed at solving problems in a short duration.
- I prepared operating systems, networks, system design, and DBMS via YouTube videos and made short notes for revision.
Some Tips
- Practice mock interviews with your friends.
- Whenever you write code, do a dry run with a sample test case to the interviewer.
- Think out loud and practice explaining your thought process clearly to the interviewer. Communication skills are also important.
The primary focus of Uber-like firms is to test a good logical thinking ability and to think about new things. If you prepare well and have confidence in your skill, the process is enriching, irrespective of the outcome. In one day of interviewing, the experience I got supersedes the entire preparation portion.
During the preparation phase, everything feels like a drag until you can connect the dots backward and experience the bliss of working hard. Remember that rejections are a part of this journey. Just keep trying for similar firms. You will get to learn and improve with each interview process and succeed eventually.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. The journey has just started. There is a lot more to overcome and experience.
All the best with your prep and cracking product-based firms!